EXCLUSIVE: Last month, we told you that British filmmaker Sally Potter (Orlando, The Party) has written and recorded her debut music album, Pink Bikini. Today, we can share the first video Potter shot for the project.
The video is for the single Black Mascara. It features Potter in a monochrome frame, turned away from the camera, and performing a hula hoop routine as the song unravels with lyrics popping up on the screen in bright red typeface. Oscar-nominated cinematographer Robbie Ryan (The Favourite) shot the project alongside a small crew of graduates from the UK’s National Film and Television School.
“Black Mascara was one of the earliest tracks I wrote for Pink Bikini, an album of songs based on a look back over my shoulder to the despairs and longings of my turbulent teenage years; a time of change: the end of childhood, the beginning of life as an adult,” Potter said.
“Making the video was a different kind of return. It needed to be made in the way I made films when I first started as a teenager. Back then I had no money, training, or equipment. The need to invent and imagine things out of nothing became part of a philosophy I later named ‘Barefoot Filmmaking’. It meant working with minimal means, borrowing gear, and working with the goodwill and energy of a few beloved friends and co-conspirators.”
Pink Bikini will be released on July 14. Billed as a “semi-autobiographical” collection of songs, the album will feature music and lyrics by Potter, and will be based on the filmmaker’s experience coming of age as a young woman in 1960s London, as a “young rebel” and activist. Musical arrangements on the album will feature work from guitarist Fred Frith, who has long collaborated with Potter on her film scores.
Best known for her directorial work on features such as 1992’s Orlando, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s classic novel starring Tilda Swinton, and Ginger & Rosa (2012), starring Elle Fanning, Potter had a music career that predates her work in cinema. During the 1970s, she was a member of the Feminist Improvising Group, an avant-garde band that toured extensively in Europe.
Potter also performed with the Film Music Orchestra and collaborated (as lyricist) with Lindsay Cooper on the album Oh Moscow, performing in the USSR and East Berlin in 1989, before the wall came down.
Check out the full video above.
